Barbour Says Romney Can Overcome Primary Attacks

By Jonathan D. Salant -
Mar 24, 2012

Mitt Romney is likely to overcome
resistance within his party in the next month and rally
Republicans to his presidential candidacy, Haley Barbour, a
former Republican National Committee chairman, said.

Even after a bitter primary contest, Romney will be able to
rally conservatives against President Barack Obama in November,
Barbour, a former Mississippi governor, said in an interview on
Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt,”
airing this weekend.

Romney is “finally a real front-runner,” said Barbour,
who said he voted for former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich in
his state’s primary, where Rick Santorum won Republicans.

While Romney’s Mormon religion may be a factor among
Southern primary voters who supported other candidates, Barbour
said, “There are 25,000 Southern Baptist preachers that will
vote for a Mormon before they vote for Obama.”

Even the flap over an Etch A Sketch comment by Romney
adviser Eric Fehrnstrom, who likened the campaign’s ability to
reset in the fall to a child’s toy, will pale in comparison with
the attacks that come from Obama and his labor-union allies in
the general election contest, Barbour said.

‘Carpet-Bomb’

“They’re going to carpet-bomb him to try to disqualify him
or to make him unacceptable, because Obama can’t run on his
record,” Barbour said.

While “the incumbent president’s always the favorite,”
Barbour said, “Barack Obama is a great uniter of Republicans”
and the former Massachusetts governor won’t have to reach out to
a member of the party’s conservative wing for his vice-
presidential nominee.

“Republicans want him to pick the person who makes it the
most likely he’ll win in November,” Barbour said. “I don’t
think that he’s going to need to pick somebody from the right to
gin up conservatives in our party.”

Barbour mentioned three potential Republican vice
presidential possibilities, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett;
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who he said could help both in
that pivotal state and with Latino voters; and Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, another swing state.

On health care, Barbour said Romney’s support of a
requirement in Massachusetts for all residents to buy insurance
or pay a penalty, the prototype for the federal plan that
Republicans oppose, won’t hurt the candidate in November.

States’ Authority

With the U.S. Supreme Court holding three days of oral
arguments on the Obama plan next week, Barbour said states, and
not the federal government, can mandate that people buy health
insurance -- just as they require drivers to carry auto
insurance. Barbour said he wouldn’t support a Massachusetts-
style health care plan in his own state “because I think it’s
bad policy.”

Even as Barbour helps raise money for Karl Rove’s
Crossroads GPS, a nonprofit group that doesn’t disclose its
donors, he said it isn’t healthy for millions of dollars to be
spent without the public knowing where they came from.

He suggested doing away with limits on campaign spending
and just saying, “Look, any human being can contribute any
amount of money that’s their money to any candidate, and a
candidate has to report within 24 hours on the Internet.”